Winter Art Exploration

It's been a long winter; it's been a short winter.  Whichever it has been for you, hopefully it has been a productive winter, a creative winter, and a healthy winter.

For me it has been a winter of exploration of art beyond and including photography.  Previously I posted about using my photographs in mixed media artwork.  This winter has been a time of great learning all about various types of mixed media artwork as well as the fun and addictive art of what is now known as Zen Tangle or Zen Doodle.  I've spent many hours learning and practicing this art form with mixed results, most of which turned out pretty, although some were quite messy.  I've incorporated them in new art journals as well as simply filling up colorful page after page of doodles in my sketch book.  While some of the typical doodle patterns seem too difficult for me for now, most of them are very easy to do and gave me much new inspiration and creativity.

Along with doodling my winter away, I have found even more beautiful ways of using photography in mixed media artwork.  Especially the kind of photographs I make using post editing of all sorts of photography subjects.  I have always said that my designs would work beautifully in scrapbooking, but as winter comes to a close I am even more convinced that the possibilities are endless!  The other day I browsed through some of my oldest designs on this blog and my other photography sites such as Flickr, and now Viewbug, only to realize that if I stopped taking photographs and turning them into strange and beautiful abstractions, I would still have an endless supply of art to use creatively in mixed media artwork.

On the other hand, while browsing, I discovered something not so wonderful, but still useful.  That is that over time as I have taken on more and more new methods of creating my photographic artwork with new filters in my editing programs, I have forgotten much of what I used to do in the early days when I was still learning.  This turned out to be a good value lesson for me though.  I realized that it is not always necessary or even good to continually upgrade our abilities to create.  While I go for the freebie options for filters and plug-ins for my editor, it shows me that maybe, at least for awhile, I should just stop looking for new things and spend more time going back over what I did in the early days.  Maybe it is a good idea to re-explore everything I have right now to see what more can be done with it.  There is a tendency sometimes to spend so much time with the new stuff that it can end up boring.  Especially if you have allowed yourself, as I did, to forget that sometimes making do with what we already have can lead us into great discoveries.

For the next few weeks until the weather is warm enough to spend lots of time outdoors taking new photographs, my art exploration will include discovering more ways to combine my digital fusion photography with my mixed media artwork.  Last year I created over 500 different patterns alone, not counting everything else I did with my photographs.  Those patterns would make very interesting mixed media work.  So I am thinking now that stocking up on a good supply of printer ink is very important as I am going to be printing off a lot of digital fusion artwork to be used on canvases and in art journals.  I can't wait.

On a sad note, I said "Goodbye" to my Jonah.  Jonah was my Shih Tsu rescue dog I had for 4 years.  He was a good dog and rescued me in many ways too.  After he passed, I decided to get a new companion.  Meet KatieKat. 

You can see Jonah's photos under the tab dedicated especially to him.  He is greatly missed.

I also became a grandma for the 9th time this winter.  Photos of my grandchildren remain private, however.

Below are just a few of the projects I have been working on this winter.

 These are 4 examples of Zen Tangles or Doodle Art.

 These photos are of my first, believe it or not, toilet paper roll mini mixed media album.  I saw several videos on YouTube for how to make these cute little books and had to try it.  The toilet paper rolls become the pages which include pockets to add tags to.  I found that this was a great way to use the sports photographs my grandchildren give me each year.  For those who for whatever reason do not want to use toilet paper rolls, you can also use paper towel rolls cut into 2 or 3 pieces.

 Below are the 10 tags I made for sticking into the pockets I made.  I painted one side with oil pastels and used colored pencils, notebook paper and antique buttons for the reverse side of the tags.  The pencil shows just how small these little albums are.  This is the same album in the photo of KatieKat above.

Using My Photography For What????

Oh my gosh!  I hadn't realized it had been so long since I last posted here.  Time has flown the past few months.  I've moved to a location much better suited for my work as well as my play.  But really my work IS play for me.  But in addition to this, I've discovered something totally new, for me anyway, and that is mixed media art and mixed media art journals.  So I have spent much of the past couple of months anyway, learning as much as I can so I can be able to do this kind of art properly.

No, don't worry.  I am not leaving my photography behind, although it seemed like it there for awhile.  Actually, I think I want to find a way to incorporate my photography into my mixed media artwork.  I think this would be so much fun as well as how it would make the ephemera (new vocabulary word for me) I use in the artwork totally my own instead of things I find elsewhere.  Or maybe a combination of both.

So, what I did in October and the first half of November was to create my first mixed media art journal.  Now the problem I had with this is my own impatience because I wanted to be able to do everything right away even though I don't even have all the kinds of supplies I need to do so.  For instance, stencils.  And stamps.  And that darn ephemera.  I also do not have a lot of options in the mixed media types of pigments such as watercolors and inks.  I do have colored pencils, black Sharpie pens (so far) and acrylic tube and bottled paints.  But to compensate, I used the computer to find and print out and then cut out or tear out various pictures of possible things I might want to use.  That didn't work as well as I had hoped, but to that I blame on not being well versed in this kind of artwork yet.  I learned how to make some of the things I will need also and have begun making my own stencils, and stamps out of things found around the house.  I think the most unique of these items has been the mallet end of a broken meat pounder (tenderizer).  It makes pretty cool dots in pattern and in two different sizes.  My best and favorite, so far, homemade ephemera or paper has been plain old coffee filters I've been using to blot excess paints both on the artwork itself and on the pallets.  Blotting over and over on the filters has thickened the paper quite a bit and I have finally used some in a mixed media canvas that turned out interesting.

Now I am looking at ideas for how to do this using my own photography in different parts of my art.  I think that especially the abstract photography or digital fusion photography will work best in my abstract art.  I am not sure yet how I would use landscapes, florals, or other photographs, but I am sure I will figure that out.  There is one layout in my art journal where I cut out flowers from actual photographs and put them into the design.  But they are thicker and heavier than the rest of the page they are put on so they required a heavier amount of gel medium to hold them down and cover them well.  I used glossy gel medium which took longer to dry properly even though it felt dry to the touch.  When turning the pages, they ended up sticking together and did some major damage I am not sure I can repair.  So I have decided for now to use my own printouts of my photos on regular computer paper or maybe card stock instead of photos from the photo developing places.

Then, some sad news, my little Jonah ended up needing to be put to sleep as he was in obvious last stages of his life.  He was having increasing difficulty walking and holding his bladder, as well as no longer eating after vomiting his last meal a whole day after he ate it.  It was very hard to let him go but it was harder to watch him struggle and have bouts of pain where he would make sounds I never knew a dog could make.  You can see more photos of Jonah in his own tab at the top of the page.

This past week I have focused on my photography again because I knew I was away from it for too long.  I've done some still life photos of fresh vegetables prior to making homemade tacos, and then later some still life photos of marbles and a flower vase with some different backgrounds, such as felt pieces, and the mesh wrappers that come on fresh fruit.  After that I went on to do some digital fusion artwork with the still life photos and have been posting those to my Flickr photostream.  Here is one example that turned out looking like a big open mouth on a fish...but hey, to you it might look like something totally different.  What beautiful dark blue eyes this fishy has!

So, this being very early the morning after Thanksgiving, I want to say that I hope you had a wonderful day and spent some great time with family and friends.  Or if you are like me and having your holiday on a different day to accommodate various scheduling issues, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving yet to come.  The Christmas season has officially begun and that means a lot of different things to different people.  For me it means a celebration of the greatest man who ever lived, Jesus Christ.  It's a busy time for many and I hope I will be back on here before this year is ended.  But, if I don't make it, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Colorful Digital Fusion Photography Tutorial

Hey there!  It's that time again.  I just completed a set of digital fusion photographs that I thought would make a great tutorial.  I recently moved to a new location in the same town but it offers many more photographic opportunities than I have previously had.  So I've been spending time taking some pictures just for more practice than anything else, but came up with some pretty cool shots.  But not all of them came out clearly in focus the way I wanted them.  Oh some parts were focused but not the parts I was aiming for.  Need more practice there.  But there was one very colorful photo I took that wasn't really all that bad, but definitely wasn't good enough to stand alone.  There are little flower and vegetable gardens all around me here and in this one little garden is a planter of a darling little girl sitting on a garden bench holding a basket of hens and chickens.  The hens and chickens did not focus as well as I thought they did.  But other parts of the photo were okay.  But as I said, it is the color combinations that are truly fascinating for this tutorial.

Here is a photo of the full planter.

Below is the photo I am using for today's tutorial.  For your purposes, this time find something with some good color dynamics as well as some different textures, lines, and angles and then take your picture.

*Reminder:  I am using Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X5.  But you can use Photoshop or other software of your choice.  The settings may not have the same names but this is your chance to explore what your software can do for you.

The first thing I chose to do was to highlight all the lines and angles by using the effects filter in the default grouping called "Artistic Effects" and within the group the effect called "Glowing Edges."  I love the black light poster or black velvet style poster that results.

I'm going to work with this at a later time.  For this tutorial, I want to continue using the original colors.  This next photo I used a default effects grouping called "Distortion Effects."  Within the group I chose "Polar Distortion" and got this result.

Hmmmm.  What do you think? 

Normally at this point I will back track and go back to the original for each new effect.  But I liked the oddness of this one so I used it for the following results.  These were all done using various settings in the downloadable filter effect group called Medhi.  This is one of my favorite filter groups and it is usable for both Corel and Photoshop.  It is also free.  Within this group is a favorite "Kaleidoscope" effects with lots of variable settings.  (The great thing about the colors and textures of this photo is that I have only just started creating new designs and there are so many more possibilities I can work with.  This is why this time you are to make a photo of something colorful and textured.)

The following are just kaleidoscope variations from the Mehdi group that I chose to use.  At this point, you can do what I have done, or experiment on your own with whatever special filter effects your software provides, download other filters if possible, and go from there.  These are what I did so far.

If I wanted to, I could probably go back to the Kaleidoscope and use it on the original photo as well and come up with all new versions.  I am not sure yet if I will do that or not.  I am always excited when I somehow manage to make hearts as in the bottom one here.

Flickr Photo Albums

Alright, today I thought I might share a few of my favorite Flickr albums that I have created from the digital fusion photography I have been doing.  I try to keep organized on Flickr the best I can so that if you prefer to look through albums instead of the entire photostream, you can do so.

This first album is my most recent.  I'm still working on it, but I have quite a lot done so far.  Remember to keep checking back to see what else I've done with it.  Believe it or not, last week I took some macro shots of some thick onion skins after I was finished cooking.  Once I did that, it was time to see what would happen once I started editing them into other pieces of art.  This folder is the result so far.  Obviously it is called Onion Skins.

This next album was created after Christmas 2014 when I had done a lot of light painting of my Christmas Tree lights.  Then I did something I had never done before with light painting.  I turned those shots into digital fusion photographs just to see what would happen if I went crazy with the light painting photos.  This folder is called Light Painting Gone Mad.  I hope you enjoy it.

By far one of my biggest album, with over 600 pieces, is called The Kaleidoscope Collection.  You can find it here.  Almost everything I have worked on usually has at least one kaleidoscope piece made from an original photo.  I also have on both of my photography blogs, some that I have done from scratch.  However, all of these, I believe, are from original photographs I have taken.

In all the albums in my photostream you will find mixtures of other albums.  For example, in my Macro album, you will also find kaleidoscopes and other abstracts because I have cross-referenced everything.  It might not have been the best idea and at some point I may undertake to change how I organized the artwork.

Well, there you are.  I hope you enjoy browsing through these albums.  If you wish to see more albums, just click on the photostream link in the above paragraph and go from there.  Throughout all you will see the originals, and then if I have made any digital fusion works, you will see those as well.  In many cases you can check the file name to see which original is the base for the artwork. 

Photographic Study of Queen Anne's Lace in One Photo Revision

This past week or two, up through tonight, I've been working on trying to improve several of the photographs I took while on vacation.  Honestly, I've only ever been on two vacations in my entire life and both were treats given to me by my daughter.  So it is important to me that the photos I shot while there are the best they can be.  I'm also working on other photos I'm trying to improve.  This post will be about just one photo and what has been done to make it better.  It's a photo of Queen Anne's Lace--a weed--but one that is pretty enough to deserve a royal name.

Before I get to the photos, I thought it would be interesting to find out some facts about this wild plant.  For instance, did you know that it is also called a wild carrot and the roots are edible if pulled early enough before they get woody.  Great care must be taken, however, because the plant is very close in appearance to several poisonous species such as Hemlock. 

"Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing. Belonging to the carrot family, Queen Anne’s lace is a biennial that is also known as wild carrot. Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods." See more here.
Here is another website about this interesting plant.. 





Okay, let's get to the photos.

 This is the original photo pretty much right out of the camera.  I may have done some sharp focus editing on the day I photographed this.  It was about a year ago, taken in a store front alley near an interesting spot many photographers use for both wedding and family group portraits.  While my daughter-in-law was photographing some of her children there, I was looking around for other things to photograph.  I noticed among the tossed out pop and beer cans, empty snack packages and other bits of trash, these flowering weeds attempting to give the alley some beauty.  I wanted to see if I could take some of that away with me.  Because it was a hot day and I don't walk as well as I would like to, I was actually sitting in the car with the door open when I took this shot.  Since this was last year, I was also still pretty new to the camera I was using, and still use.  It is a Canon Rebel EOS T3i with the kit 18-55mm lens.  The photo was shot at 1/125 sec, f7.1, and ISO 100.

I asked for some assistance at an online photography forum I am a member of called The Shark Tank on Light Stalking. While I originally felt that it was focused okay, if maybe a little soft, it was suggested that the main subject was flat and needed to be sharper.  I was initially concerned that if I had sharpened it already when I first took the photo, sharpening it more would create too much digital noise.  So I resisted that suggestion but chose, instead to try to enhance the overall shot by using a "warm" filter in editing.  Here is that result.

Well, while it did make the background much better, it is still showing as being too soft or out of focus.  So I gave in and decided to try to sharpen it again.  Here is that result.

I did have to admit that this made the photo better.  The sharpened photo looked more in focus, although there are a few petals near the center that are still out of focus.  But there was still that initial issue about the photo looking flat and the eyes being drawn away from the main flower to those in the background.  So this time I decided to try black and white.  I tried two different styles of black and white.  The first one below is what is considered normal black and white.

Now I have been looking at this photo long enough and working with it long enough that my eye is naturally drawn to the background just to check how it looks overall.  So I am not able to adequately judge whether I have accomplished the goal of keeping the eyes on the main flower.  Below is what is called "heavy" black and white.

I had to remove digital noise from both of the black and white photos as it was very noticeable in both of those.  Also I notice in the bottom one, the heavy black and white, that there is more dark tones to the flower itself than in the normal black and white.  I think the heavy shadowing in the bottom one brings more attention to the background instead of moving the attention to the main flower, while the normal black and white one keeps the focus on the main flower where it belongs. What do you think?  Please feel free to comment about your suggestions and tips.

While I am at it, below are some graphic designs, or digital fusion photographic art that I did with this particular photo of Queen Anne's Lace.  I hope you like them.  For more of the things I am working on, don't forget to follow me on Flickr and on Twitter @capirani.

Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing. Belonging to the carrot family, Queen Anne’s lace is a biennial that is also known as wild carrot. Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods. - See more at: http://www.ediblewildfood.com/queen-annes-lace.aspx#sthash.QuBqme2I.dpuf

Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing. Belonging to the carrot family, Queen Anne’s lace is a biennial that is also known as wild carrot. Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods. - See more at: http://www.ediblewildfood.com/queen-annes-lace.aspx#sthash.QuBqme2I.dpuf

Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing. Belonging to the carrot family, Queen Anne’s lace is a biennial that is also known as wild carrot. Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods. - See more at: http://www.ediblewildfood.com/queen-annes-lace.aspx#sthash.QuBqme2I.dpuf

Queen Anne’s lace earned its common name from a legend that tells of Queen Anne of England (1665-1714) pricking her finger and a drop of blood landed on white lace she was sewing. Belonging to the carrot family, Queen Anne’s lace is a biennial that is also known as wild carrot. Early Europeans cultivated Queen Anne’s lace, and the Romans ate it as a vegetable. American colonists boiled the taproots, sometimes in wine as a treat. Interestingly, Queen Anne’s lace is high in sugar (second only to the beet among root vegetables) and sometimes it was used among the Irish, Hindus and Jews to sweeten puddings and other foods. - See more at: http://www.ediblewildfood.com/queen-annes-lace.aspx#sthash.QuBqme2I.dpuf